Dear Socrates

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Having traveled from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First Century A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.

Dear Socrates,

Do you share my view that ego is all-pervasive? I tell you that my meditations have convinced me it is the root of all evil … and is also inescapable. I mean that it is inescapable for a person, which is what we normally take ourselves to be. For what is a person but an ego, and vice versa? Thus, we are inherently born into suffering and causing others to suffer because ego is the inevitable bearer (both deliverer and endurer) of these ills.

I know that I have made two claims: that ego and suffering go hand-in-hand, and that ego is everywhere. Let me give you an example of the latter that will address you, Socrates, directly.

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